


cold hands

by stutteringpeach



Series: warm blood [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, it's just a lot of feelings, long and rambly, post 8x03, some sexy references, where is the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 19:32:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18697819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stutteringpeach/pseuds/stutteringpeach
Summary: She is the hot coals in the fire and he is the blade, brought to glowing from the lick of her hands and he doesn’t know how he could ever think she had anything but warm blood.Accompanying piece to 'warm blood'.





	cold hands

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to 'warm blood' by flor about 400 times while writing this. You can tell.

It was fucking cold. There was no way to escape it: the long night had ended but winter took no mind and closed its freezing fist around the North. The nights were harsh, a darkness seemingly without end. The cruel truth was that now there were fewer bodies to keep warm and fed the castle’s precious resources stretched a little further, and there was more room for men to sleep indoors. They did not know how long this winter would last but at least they could save valuable fingers from being lost to the cold; that at least the snow seemed to be preventing the threat in the South from creeping closer.

The Mad Queen appeared to have no intention of marching her army of sellswords north and the Dragon Queen’s warriors were in no shape to take to the King’s Road, no matter how welcome the escape from the snow would be. A stalemate had occurred. The men spent their days picking through the rubble, salvaging what they could to repair the ruined walls and clearing the snowdrifts so there was room enough to spar and keep their muscles warm. Nights were spent sipping ale and trying to get a little sleep, never knowing when the order to begin the long march south would come. It was a cocktail of relief and anxiety with a twist of fear, like spending a warm afternoon drunk perched on the edge of a crumbling cliff, knowing that at any moment one wrong step could send you falling into death’s greedy, outstretched fingers.

Gendry hid from the cold by spending long hours in the smithy, melting down shards of dragonglass and reforging broken steel. They had lost the castle’s smith to the dead and Gendry had taken on the burden of directing and teaching the other few apprentices left, correcting mistakes. They slept badly on cramped cots in a small, stinking room in the smithy. At least the dying heat of the forge kept them warm.

His broken ribs were starting to heal, the bruises turning from purple to black to yellow, the wounds on his hands itching with scabs and fresh skin. It was foolish to be working before he was able, before was it was wise, but the more he swung the hammer the less he could hear the screams, the sour shrieks of corpses come back to life, the slick slither of blades slicing through flesh. The noise in the smithy was constant, the roar of the forge being stoked, the hiss of hot steel plunged into water. It quieted his thoughts but the throb of his ribs and the scars on his hands only served to remind him that the gods had deemed him worthy for some fucking reason, that he had what so many men no longer possessed.

Rest was uneasy and despite the long days and the gruelling work, many slept fitfully. It was at night that he had to close his eyes and closing his eyes meant seeing the blue eyes of the dead, seeing a man’s innards spilled out to ground as he choked on his own blood, seeing the bodies crawling over the walls like a swarm of locusts. The nights he was exhausted, desperate to slip into dreamless oblivion were when the nightmares were worst. He wakes gasping, shuddering, his chest heaves as he swallows down air and clutches at the bedclothes of his cot and finds they are soaked with hot sweat. His forces his breathing to slow, willing the pounding of his heart to stop. _Just a dream_ , but it isn’t: it was real, it was here and he barely made it out alive.

He stands and pulls on his breeches and shrugs into an undershirt, trying to ignore the way his hands tremble. The room is quiet tonight, not peppered with the moans and whimpers of men who share his nightmares. He slips out of the makeshift dormitory into the smithy and the forge is still alight, embers still glowing a burning ochre. It has not been long since he took to bed, but he knows that no more sleep will be coming to him tonight. He throws extra fuel on the fire and moves to his station, intending to resume work on reforging a sword for Ser Brienne’s squire. Might as well make use of the extra hours. The shadow on the wall shifts.

‘Isn’t it a little late for a new sword, my lady?’ he calls.

Arya materialises from the darkness, a wraith come to life, flesh and blood forming in the dim light. She wordlessly glides over to where he is stood and her small white hands starts picking over the blades that lay unfinished on the bench. Her shoulders shrug, imperceptibly but he notices.

‘Couldn’t sleep,’ she murmurs.

He continues with his work, scarfing the pieces of broken blade and placing them in the fire. He can feel her eyes following him, watching his hands as he pulls the broken sword from the flame and places them on the anvil. He brings the hammer down, the ache in his ribs stretching and the muscle in his jaw clenches at the dull pain. The cool water spits and steams as the blade boils.

He sets the hammer down and turns to face her. She has perched her small form atop a bench near the fire, hands folded in her lap, swinging ankles tucked around each other. She is in her leathers as she has been all day. Rid her of the breeches and boots and blade at her hip and she would be the perfect picture of a lady. This is not the first time she has sought him out in the darkness, when the castle is still and the fires have dimmed. She knows he doesn’t sleep; she doesn’t either. But while he works to keep the nightmares away, she wanders. She drifts, a ghost in the halls of her home, waiting for the weak gleam of dawn to peer over the mountains.

‘There are better fires to warm you in the keep.’

‘It’s _too_ warm in there.'

Only she would be too warm in a frigid castle in the bitter North. The bruise on her neck has not faded and is still as blistered as it was when the Night King’s hand had wrapped around her throat and he finds himself wondering if her blood has cooled, if she herself is colder than she was before. He steps towards her and her legs part to allow him to stand between them. This assurance between them is unfamiliar, unspoken but they have shared enough heated glances across the Great Hall, stolen into enough secret corners of the keep for him to know that this is what they are now; this is how they have grown into each other.

She inclines her head towards his, eyes tilting closed, lips parting in anticipating of his mouth on hers. His hands grasp at the leather of her hips and he breathes her in and she is fire and sweet; cold hands slipping underneath his filthy shirt to skim the damp skin of his back. The first kiss is unhurried, his hands sinking into her, pulling her to the edge of the bench and she lazily wraps her legs around him. Cool fingers slip beneath his breeches and he breathes out her name before her lips capture his again. And then it is quick and quiet and too cold to strip and he marvels at how someone so strong can be so soft. He has only known her to be fierce, unyielding, the cut of a blade so sharp that there is no pain.

 

* * *

 

Some nights, when he has finished supping and drinking in the Great Hall and is headed back across the freezing courtyard, a cold hand will close around his wrist and pull him into the shadows. She shows him the hidden staircase to her chambers, the one that is open to the air and abandoned in the winter. He follows her, always following her, freezing his fucking balls off and slipping on the frosted steps as the snow swirls silently through the tower. And then they are in her chamber, stumbling towards each other and the fire is hot but not as hot as her skin and her mouth.

Sometimes he falls into a dreamless sleep, and he thinks that she does too, but he always wakes to her bare shoulder, skin glowing in the fire light. She teaches him the game of faces, sitting naked in her bed, their hands outstretched, fingertips touching like the game of red hands he played as a child.

Her hand stings his as she catches him in another lie. ‘Got you.’

He traps her wrist and she is quick but he is stronger, twisting her until she is sprawled on the bed beneath him and her steel eyes are fierce.

‘I don’t need to play a game with you,’ he says. ‘I know when you’re lying.’

‘How?’ she demands.

He shrugs, capturing her small hands with one of his, the other tracing shadows across her ribs. ‘Just do. I know you.’

He knows it feels safer for her to feed him little titbits about her missing years under the guise of a game while they are hidden away in her room. She has told him about the faces, he knows where the scars are from, he understands why she can see in the dark.

She scoffs and pulls his face down to hers so she can kiss him. ‘I’ve poisoned people,’ she says.

‘Truth,’ he replies. ‘You already told me that one.’

‘I ripped out a horse’s throat once.’

‘That was Nymeria, that doesn’t count.’

She takes him by surprise and flips him on his back, coming to settle her thighs around him, her cold hands splayed on his bare chest.

‘I killed the Freys,’ she whispers. ‘All of them.’

‘Lie,’ he says, because yes, she’s a weapon, and she’s killed the Night King but _there is no way she could wipe out an entire house_ and he’s so sure but she smirks at him and _oh seven hells_ , he knows it’s a truth.

 

* * *

 

He asks her questions about his father and she tells him the bedtime stories she’d heard as a child, how their fathers ran wild in the Vale, the battles they had won together as young men, how they had greeted each other with the love of brothers when King Robert had come to Winterfell all those years ago.

‘It’s strange,’ Arya muses as they lie quietly together, the furs heavy around them. ‘If Robert had married Aunt Lyanna like they were supposed to, I wouldn’t have you.’

‘Or your brother,’ he says. She is silent at this. He knows that the revelation of Jon’s true parentage has driven a wedge between the Stark siblings. Arya has become even fiercer than usual, defending Jon with narrowed eyes and a hand splayed on her blade. _He’s my brother_ , she had bit out when they had been playing the game of faces. _He’s my brother, but it’s a lie._

‘Sansa knows about us,’ she says, casually.

He stares at the ceiling and the world swallows him whole. Lady Stark is perceptive but Gendry also doubts they have been that subtle. They have spent enough time staring at each other across rooms, sparring together in the courtyard under the pretext of Arya teaching him to be better with a sword, and he’s fairly certain he has been seen coming down the tower from her chambers by the servants as many times as she has been seen sneaking into the smithy at all hours of the night.

He knows Lady Stark and Lord Snow and probably all the Lords of the North and the South combined will disapprove of a bastard boy and a lady of Winterfell, he knows that the things he’s thought about doing to her and all the things she has done to him will cause a scandal. He should not be waking up in her bed nearly every morning, should not know the placement of the freckle on her left shoulder, should not know exactly where to put his hands to make her tremble. He will always be a lowborn bastard and lowborn bastards do not belong with ladies, no matter how fierce of a fighter they are, no matter how their eyes flash when teased about their title, no matter how many dead soldiers they have killed or kingdoms they have saved. But propriety was discarded long ago, likely around about the time the dead started climbing out of their graves, lost somewhere on some sacking in a dark chamber below the keep. He knows she doesn’t care.

‘Don’t worry,’ she murmurs, kissing his bare shoulder. ‘She won’t say anything. We’re allies now. Nothing bonds sisters together like a spot of execution.’

She is smirking at him, her eyebrow quirked up and his throat constricts at the sight of the smile on her face. He knows he loves her, is fairly certain that she loves him, but she is not one for soft words and declarations. He would get his hands slapped in their little game if he said he had not thought about standing with her before the heart tree, placing a golden cloak onto her shoulders. Davos has told him about the possibility of legitimacy, but he cannot think about that, least of all because there is another war waiting for them, but mostly because he is no Lord and Arya is no Lady. She is a Stark and he would never want to separate her from her pack, would never want to be the one to take the name she has fought so hard to keep.

‘Besides, I think I’ve earned a little indiscretion,’ she declares and his resolve is shot to the seven hells when she climbs on top of him and pulls his hands to her breasts. She is the hot coals in the fire and he is the blade, brought to glowing from the lick of her hands and he doesn’t know how he could ever think she had anything but warm blood.

  


 


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